I first came across Steve Roach when joyously discovering his STRUCTURES FROM SILENCE release. I went on from there to buying DREAMTIME RETURN, and now own many Roach releases and collaborations. This is my first chance officially to review a work of his. First off, I can quickly summarize WORLD'S EDGE in saying this a wonderfully executed blending of all those things that worked so well in STRUCTURES and DREAMTIME. Disc One incorporates a healthy dose of the Aboriginal percussives into Roach's trademark swelling drone-breathing synths. A perfect balance of tension-release, anticiptation-relaxation, and trancezone/ world-stopping is woven in a fine tapestry of ethereal soundworlds. Ten tracks ranging from 3:05 to 10:25 offer some of Roach's best works for the blank-stare, alpha-waved, drool-inducing moments. I'm there dude in the "Roach-cocoon", buried five miles beneath the surface of Titan, millennia after the death of the Sun. Are you with me?

Disc Two offers essentially another hour of one nonstop Roachscape, transporting you even further through massive gong calls, synthvoice wordless chants. Tibetan ruins among Cydonian foothills, crumbling on the dust storm-eroded face of Mars, now welcome your naked soul. I hear Roach's THE MAGNIFICENT VOID here too. This is Roach as best as I can describe for you. As I do for only a select handful of artists, I highly recommend you ambient-heads and electronic tunes-devotees make sure this is in your collection. Thanks for all the trips, Steve.

The double-CD WORLD'S EDGE was Steve's first solo project created after his move to Tucson in 1990. At last the inspirations that fueled his music for years were right outside the studio, helping to feed an especially intense creative period. It is one that Steve looks back on as an important period of transition and discovery within the onion-skin-like evolution of his work. The roots of ORIGINS, ARTIFACTS, THE MAGNIFICENT VOID, and ON THIS PLANET are clearly present here, as well as the transition from the benchmark DREAMTIME RETURN.

Disc two contains an often-overlooked hour-long piece, "To the Threshold Of Silence." This composition shows significant influences from Tibetan ceremonial music, with a fusion of deep space music, melding perfectly into Steve's landscapes of time-stretching textures. Added to this foundation is harmonic singing, processed gongs, Tibetan bells, and deep Earth pulses, all combined to created a kind of ancient-modern sacred space. This groundbreaking long-form piece foreshadowed THE DREAM CIRCLE, SLOW HEAT, ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS and PRAYERS TO THE PROTECTOR. This rediscovery will delight both old listeners and those newly-experiencing Steve's vast musical journey.